


Can I Watch?  Can I Have You?

by bellefire



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Canon, First Love, M/M, Not Beta Read, Obsessive Behavior, One Shot, Possessive Behavior, Roman POV, Self-Harm, i think, peter is very very pretty, roman's inability to process emotions like a person, the note scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24130585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellefire/pseuds/bellefire
Summary: Roman's thoughts on Peter when he passed that one little note that changed everything.
Relationships: Roman Godfrey/Peter Rumancek
Comments: 3
Kudos: 86





	Can I Watch?  Can I Have You?

**Author's Note:**

> Thinking about doing a little series of one-shots that are more or less canon like this while I work on an AU. Hello, its 5 years later and I have only just watched this show. Which is a way of saying that I went from elated to devasted in one weekend thanks pandemic.

Can I watch? Can I have you?

Peter was small and dark except in the way that he filled a room, except in the way he always shined. He was rough and wild and delicate, all distracting ring-adorned hand movements. He moved like he wanted to run, he moved with grace. Peter was beautiful and Roman never wanted to lose sight of him now that he knew him. So he had no fucking idea what possessed him to write the note.

Peter could think Roman was a straight up lunatic and leave. He could think Roman believed the gutter trash rumors about him and leave. He could think so many things, so many reasons to leave. To never again look Roman’s way but for some awful reason Roman couldn’t help it.

He believed.

He looked at the way Peter’s eyelashes, thicker and longer than any girl’s he’d ever seen, rest gently against the paleness of his skin while he unraveled the ball of paper Roman cavalierly tossed over. Roman looked and just knew there was something Other about Peter Rumancek. Being around Peter sung to something in him, made him want to prove his worth, or something even more stupid. Like hold Peter’s hand. He couldn’t get enough.

That night he found Peter at the very first murder scene crouched low…tracking, looking like the kind of predator you invited in and begged to stay, Roman was convinced. Peter had watched him turn the Sheriff’s little piggly-wigglies away like he could tell exactly what Roman had done, like he’d expected Roman to do something extraordinary. Then they realized they shared dreams. They were linked. Roman liked to think those were all good reasons that gave his instincts more validity but it still boiled down to: he just knew.

Peter was a werewolf. The sky was blue. Godfrey Steel polluted the river. Facts.

Roman stared, his heart sunk the longer it took for Peter to react at the words haphazardly scrawled in a nervous rush. Everyone else in the classroom might have well not existed. The morning sun beamed in through the windows casting a warm light that was almost too sweet and gave Roman a slight headache. Peter though, he glowed. His hair somehow darker for the light, his skin perfect, and the yellow light reflected in his eyes just so giving them an impossible golden tint.

Roman wasn’t used to not having the things he wanted. He’d never wanted a person before, not like this. It was so much more than he’d ever felt that his chest _hurt._ If Peter denied him…

He didn’t have to think about the what if’s.

Peter crushed the paper into a tight ball. He stared ahead for a second and then, finally, finally, gave Roman a shaky little nod without looking at him.

Roman swallowed the ridiculous urge to throw a fist in the air along with the urge to drag Peter over onto his lap so he could tell him, ask him, please, please trust me.

After class Roman went to the boy’s restroom to collect himself. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding and the strange humiliating need to cry built a pressure behind his eyes. Something about Peter put so much shit into his head. Thoughts he couldn’t do anything about, feelings he didn’t have names for, and for a brief fleeting moment it all makes him so fucking angry.

He knew Peter wasn’t to blame. But it was Peter’s face behind his eyelids at night. Peter, who didn’t care about Roman’s status but still kept just that little bit of distance between them. Peter, who laughed at Roman’s jokes, even the ones that tipped into cruelty. Peter was not cruel, but he understood the world in a way Roman had never been given the opportunity to as sheltered as he was.

Roman flung the stall door open and leaned against the sink, he stared into the mirror for far too long, uncaring if anyone came in. He doesn’t remember taking the razor blade out of his wallet, it was simply just in his hand because he knew what he was going to use it. 

The drag of the blade barely stung yet it still released the tension he worked himself into. The little cut was deep but easily explained away if he needed it to be. No one he needed to be explaining himself to would be looking at his chest anyway. Red welled and spilled down, down, down trailing a path that looked like a river on map.

Calm washed over him. Roman held onto that calm for dear life.

By the end of the day when he saw Peter again he was able to walk the opposite direction without emotion while Peter left out the other school exit. They somehow without talking about it knew to not draw attention to themselves. More attention than usual at any rate. Still, Roman was relieved when he picked Peter up a little ways down the round. Peter didn’t smile or say much of anything but that didn’t matter. Roman was going to see a part of Peter no one else ever has except Peter’s mom even then… this was different.

This would be for him in a way no one else had been given and he had been given _permission_.

Roman had never really asked for permission before.

Only for Peter.

He knew a gift, though, when it was presented to him. He wouldn’t let Peter down. No matter what, he would make sure Peter never regretted this. Roman would prove himself worthy of that trust, that friendship.

The calmness his blade provided dwindled the closer to Peter’s trailer they got, the trees seemed taller and the sun still seemed too sweet. But. Then. It was an accident really, Peter hadn’t noticed or cared that his shoulder was leaning into Roman’s. Of course Roman noticed. His chest was fire but his nerves were soothed. Better than the blade, less guilt-ridden, just as harrowing. The burn of it consumed him.

With a gasp he could never exhale Roman realized the word for what it was when he was around Peter.

That word was his alone.

Just like Peter would be.

fin


End file.
